Girls Weekend

So I am really late in this post, but we had an awesome girls weekend in February thanks to my neighbor Karen. They rented out a cabin for the winter and all of our "girl" neighbors went to Cle Elum for the weekend. We even ventured out to Roslyn to hear a band at the "brick". What a fun weekend with awesome women spent chatting and relaxing. Can't wait to do another one!

Karen, Tonya, Michelle, Kristen, Gina, Sandy, Stephanie and me

Stephanie, Karen, Michelle and me at 4am...yes that's right, we made it all the way to 4am. If you get a bunch of moms together for a weekend they will take advantage of every moment.

Toothless Bronson

So Bronson is at that age when you start to loose your baby teeth. This is how he looked last weekend.

His front tooth was so loose that he had "Hillbilly Tooth"!

He was playing with it all weekend.... I even talked him into trying to pull it out on Sunday night.

He went off to school on Monday and this is how he came home. I guess you have to go to the principals office if you loose a tooth at school. I am sure it has something to do with lawyers.

He wanted to keep the tooth and take it to his moms so he wrote the tooth fairy a letter asking her (in this case him) to keep the tooth. The tooth is in the envelop they gave him at school and you can see the letter he wrote the tooth fairy.

The tooth fairy granted his request and when he got up the tooth fairy had left him $5. (The night before the tooth fairy did not have anything smaller than a $5) Bronson was very excited the next morning and came into show me. He asked me.... "Dad why did the tooth ferry not leave me a note back? At my moms house I got a $1 and a note." (This tooth fairy had no idea I need to leave a note) I told him.... I am sure the tooth fairy was in a hurry and then asked him.... Would you rather have $5 or $1 and a note? He was quick to answer $5.

We love the snow

A great thing about Utah is the snow. I love the snow and the kids love the snow and luckily Utah gets great snow that we can enjoy. This year both Bronson and Emory are in ski lessons. Emory seems to be a bit more natural at it, but Bronson really likes it and went on his first green run this year.

Emory skiing in both of these pictures...its hard to tell because they both have red coats.

Bronson in these pictures.

Costa Rica

We took a trip to get out of the cold and decided on Costa Rica. It was one of the most beautiful places we have ever been and would go back in a second. We stayed at the Marriott in Gaunacasta, it was only a year and a half old and was amazing. We stayed on the "dry" part of the country which was about 95 degrees during the day and had a low of 70 at night, but was only a couple of hours from many rain forests and volcanoes. We rented a car and drove into the local surfing town every morning to walk around, get groceries and site see.

The beach was pretty, but reminded us of California...the sunsets were spectacular.

One of our daily drives was spent touring the volcano and rain forest. We woke up at 5:30 am to start our day of adventure. The big attraction was Arenal volcano...it is active, but hasn't erupted with lava for the past couple of months. The drive was 4 hours each way on mostly paved roads (the roads are not in the best condition and apparently they don't believe in shoulders on the road). The most interesting part of the drive was not the chickens, dogs, iguanas, cows or donkeys in the road...but the police pulling everyone over doing passport checks on the pan-american highway. Luckily for us we had a copy and didn't leave the trip with one of those "funny" stories on how you end up in jail for a night.

Our first stop at Arenal was a zip line tour. This was my first zip line tour and I was really excited...that was until I found that the zip lines don't take you in the jungle they take you over the jungle from canyon to canyon about 200-300 feet in the air. I sucked it up and went along for the fun. We ended up having a great time and I think it was the highlight of Wade's trip.

After our adventure with zip lines we had a very nice relaxing afternoon. Costa Rica has amazing hot springs that are naturally heated by the volcano. Our hotel suggested a hot spring location that was partly man made. This was the best suggestion ever, we avoided the crowds and mud of the other hot springs and spend our time enjoying the nice warm water on big rocks with a waiter bringing us food....the water came straight from the ground but was pumped into nice pools in lush beautiful grounds. This was my favorite part of the day.

After the hot springs we headed to a local restaurant to eat dinner before heading back on the long 4 hour drive.

This was the view from the restaurant...spectacular!

Sun set dinner in front of the volcano...can't get any better!

The rest of the time we spent touring the local towns and just relaxing at the hotel pool. We love the ocean, but Wade and I both agree that it is really nice to see the ocean and hear the ocean but we can both do without the sand and salt water. This hotel was the best of both worlds with the pool ending on the sandy beach of the ocean.

The hotel grounds...

All in all we had a great trip with lots of sun, really good local food and plenty of relaxation.

Quick Weekend Trip

Wade had a national sales meeting in Miami. The week before then he had another meeting in New Jersey, so the only way I could see my dear husband in 2 weeks is to fly for the weekend to see him...so I had to suck it up and fly to Miami.

We rented a car and drove to Key West.

We spent the afternoon at an outdoor restaurant eating and enjoying the sun.

We stayed and watched the sunset in Mallory square.

They had "interesting" people at Mallory square

Work Fun

I had to travel to Boulder for work meetings, but am lucky enough to have great people that I work with. The nice thing about training and corporate meetings are the chance to catch up with people I don't get to see very often.

Andrew, Tom, Ginger, Alice and Me

Me, Ginger and Alice

Fun Weather

We have had snow a few time this year and Alliya loves to play in it. Our neighbors Tonya and Curt were nice enough to give us a "snowman kit" for Christmas. We were able to use it to build a snowman after New Years.

All of that snow led to flood level rivers and this is Snoqualmie Falls that is 5 minutes from our house. My mom was in town for a "girls weekend" and we walked around the falls...it was amazing.